Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
> the right usually won and the left lost
> because most people are naturally cautious and trusting of their leaders
The adverb "naturally" is usually well-intended but almost always an evasion in practice. I would substitute "sensibly." Trusting one's leaders is almost always sensible, and has been that way extending back to pre-sapiens homo. Caution is also the most sensible _standard_ response to most conditions. (Is anyone here adventurous in responding to spam?) Whatever were the sources of the core votes for either Kerry or Bush last fall, it is nearly certain that the _swing_ voters were those who accepted the assurances of both candidates that we were in a war we had to win -- i.e., they trusted their leaders on the fundamental question of the day. They _then_ trusted the expererienced leader, the incumbent, to lead them through that necessary war. That too was sensible -- i.e. rational, not _irrational_.
> and
> the prevailing order of things until circumstances jolt them from their
> complacency and shake their confidence in the status quo.
UNTIL CIRCUMSTANCES JOLT THEM . . .SHAKE THEIR CONFIDENCE!!!! Much of the debate on these lists (lbo, pen-l, marxism, the old spoons lists) has been over what is/would be the nature of such circumstances, how or whether they are predictable, and whether they can be brought into existence by intentional action. (I have steadily denied the last, labelling it voluntarism, and on that basis condemned most or all (generic) "criticism" of "The Left" voiced on this list as sandbox politics.) It is the intermittance of such periods and their unpredictable occurrence which is the basis for my liking of the metaphor of "punctuated equilibrium." (Understand, this is _not_ an appeal to any homology to biological evolution or to scientific jargon but merely the borrowing of what seems to me a powerful metaphor for the understanding of history, quite independendently of its validity in biology. It works in politics even if Gould, Elledge, Vrba, et al were wrong in applying it to evolution.)
>
> We don't have enough respect for the pragmatic wariness and choices of
> people in a risky environment, and mistake it for ignorance.
Agreed, with the qualification that (as is usually the case) Who "we" is here is always open to question, and, secondly, I am postponing until another day the question of whether (in reference to social democracy) Marvin draws the right conclusions from this elsewhere in his post.
> Their main
> interests are private - their families, personal status, leisure
> activities - until circumstances force them to pay attention to social
> issues and the organizations which purport to represent their interests in
> the public arena.
Yes. In some post in the last few weeks I simply summarized this as "getting along," and some squeaked that besides getting along they had leisure activities, etc. Of course. That sort of squeaking is one of the reasons it is sometimes difficult to have a discussion/debate that goes anyplace on this list.
Jim Devine wrote:
>
> I agree with Carrol: to presume that the populace isn't "rational" (in
> the sense that you are or I am) is to put oneself above them, like
> some sort of demigod. It's elitism. (BTW, "rationality" isn't always
> Hegelian.)
> JD
>
> On 6/5/05, Carrol Cox wrote: One cannot understand a population
> except on the premise that (with demographically insignificant
> exceptions) that popoulace makes its decisions on rational grounds.
> The appearance of irrationality is a measure of the observer's
> ignorance of the conditions under which the decisions are made.<
I'm quoting this post because after reading the various responses to Jim & me, I see no reason to change these initial arguments. The points Jim & I make seem to me to be almost axiomatic for anyone seriously interested in organizing for change.
Carrol